Fun Podcasts...

I've rummaged through many podcasts floating out there in Radioland. A set of them that I particularly like come from QDNow. My personal favorites are Mr Manners and Grammar Girl. This week's Grammar Girl podcast covered a topic I am almost certainly guilty of breaking the rules.

Using i.e. versus e.g. to either further describe something or give an example, respectively. Firstly, as some readers may have noticed, I am not a fan of adding punctuation to abbreviations (particularly an apostrophe to the plural CDs. Even though it is actually okay, writing CD's always looks like a possessive to me.)

I learned some of my non-punctuation from living in Britain where Mr and Ms do not normally have periods after them. I liked this form because it looks cleaner and does not give an illusion of breaking the flow of a sentence. Flow and tone of writing mean quite a bit to me, as it is my personal drive to write as I wish I spoke.

So yes, I am very guilty (though one cannot qualify guilt since it is an absolute (and I am going into stickler mode here)) of writing i.e. as ie, but at least I usually follow it with a comma. Although I am completely wrong, I feel that if I used the periods, I would omit the comma due to cluttering up punctuation marks.

I am almost certain I have swapped i.e. and e.g. on a regular basis, probably because I favor the vocal sound of i.e. and the fact it is used more readily in speech. I just checked my most recent Fry Side post, and I think I may have actually gotten the usage correct in the first paragraph.

Still, though I readily admit to being a proper stickler, I do not think I will be going back to check on my previous posts and edit them. I will be a little more aware of using those two abbreviations in my writing in the future. That is certain. Thanks, Grammar Girl.